9/11 War Games

before and during the attacks

paralysis of air defenses to ensure the attack succeeded?who coordinated these efforts?

There has been virtually no media coverage of the issues of the
9/11 war games, the "amazing coincidence" of a "plane into
building" exercise being conducted that morning, or the alleged role
of Vice President Richard Cheney in overseeing the war games that morning.

parallel examples: "Internal Look" simulation of
Iraq invasion of Kuwait in 1990, NSA spying on United
Nations masked by exercise

Perhaps the biggest newly uncovered secret is that on the morning of 9/11, when Al Qaeda struck New York and Washington, the Pentagon's annual "Global Guardian" war game was in full swing. Three dozen real nuclear weapons had been loaded onboard intercontinental bombers in North Dakota, Missouri, and Louisiana.

When Bush left Florida on Air Force One amid fears that terrorists would try take down the presidential plane, he flew right into the middle of the war game.

Secrets of 9/11: New Details of Chaos, Nukes Emerge
by William M. Arkin and Robert Windrem
September 11, 2016

Required reading for everyone concerned about the "failure"
of the Air Force to stop the 9/11 attacks. This "timeline" includes more 9/11 wargames than were detailed in Crossing the Rubicon - but even if a few more exercises held that day are disclosed, that probably would not change the paradigm to understand how and why 9/11 was allowed to happen and given technical assistance.

The most in-depth analysis of the 9/11 war games is Michael
Ruppert's book "Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American
Empire at the End of the Age of Oil" available at fromthewilderness.com

"The Fog of War Games" -- the miraculous timing of the skyjackers,
part 2
by margieburns on Sat Jul 8 2006

Four decades ago, the novel (and movie) "Seven
Days in May" was a popular political thriller about a military
coup d'etat in the United States against a President who sought to scale
back the Cold War. In this story, a military cabal schemed to topple the
government under the guise of a military communications exercise. This
"war game" was to have been used as the cover for toppling the
government and installing a General as President who would stop arms control
treaties with the Soviet Union.

A different fictional treatment of the use of a "war game"
to perpetrate covert objectives was described in "The
Lone Gunmen," a television show aired on Fox TV in March 2001.
In that show, a small cabal within the military-industrial complex used
a wargame scenario as cover for remote control hijacking of a commercial
flight and crashing it into the World Trade Center in order to boost military
spending for the permanent war. This show was so close to the most likely
scenario for 9/11 that it is plausible that this information was deliberately
leaked in order to discredit the idea as merely part of a bad television
drama, thereby inoculating people from contemplating the probability that
9/11 was a covert operation using remote controlled planes under the guise
of a war game.

Lone Gunmen script excerpt
BYERS: We know it's a war game scenario.
That it has to do with airline counter-terrorism. Why is it important enough to kill for.
BYERS SNR: Because it's no longer a game.
BYERS: But if some terrorist group wants to act out this scenario,
then why target you for assassination?
BYERS SNR: Depends on who your terrorists are.
BYERS: The men who conceived of it the first place. You're saying
our government is planning to commit a terrorist act against a domestic
airline?
BYERS SNR: There you go again. Blaming the entire government
as usual. In fact, a small faction ...
BYERS: For what possible gain?
BYERS SNR: The Cold War's over, John.
But with no clear enemy to stockpile against, the arms market's flat.
But bring down a fully loaded 727 into the middle of New York City and
you'll find a dozen tinpot dictators all over the world just clamouring
to take responsibility, and begging to be smart-bombed. BYERS: I can't believe this. This is about increasing arms sales?

On September 11, at least five different "war games" were being
conducted by the military and intelligence agencies. These exercises included
simulations of 9/11 type events, a plane into building scenario near Dulles
Airport in Virginia, and deployment of fighters to northern Canada and
Alaska (which reduced the number of fighters that were available to protect
the US?). It seems that these exercises were the means used to paralyze
the air defenses, thereby ensuring the success of the "attacks."
The British Navy was conducting exercises in the Indian ocean near the
Middle East. A biowar exercise was also about to start in New York City.

Who has the power to coordinate all of these exercises? Osama bin Laden?
Saddam Hussein? Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah? Dick Cheney and the White
House National Security Council?

It is difficult to believe that it is a bizarre "coincidence"
that the military and CIA were conducting wargames similar to 9/11 on
September 11, 2001. While it seems likely, if not blatantly obvious, that
these war games were one of the means used to confuse the air defense
system for sufficient time to allow the World Trade Center to be attacked, the war games do not answer the question of how the air defenses
were suppressed for another half hour after the second tower was hit (at
which time everyone knew that an attack was in progress). The Air Force
had another half hour after the second tower to scramble interceptors
to defend the Capitol (the plane that is alleged to have hit
the Pentagon made its 180 degree turn over Ohio to head back toward D.C.
about the time that the second tower was struck).

Perhaps a complete investigation would reveal if the national order
to ground all aviation (an unprecedented directive from the Transportation
Department) also included military airplanes as well -- especially given
the chaos and confusion that morning, a stand down of key fighter interceptors
would have been easily concealed. But the information about the wargames
suggests that a "stand down" order was NOT issued that morning
-- the confusion from the war games was how the defenses of New York and
Washington were interfered with sufficiently to ensure the success of
the attacks. It is unlikely that the "inside job" conspirators would have
risked the success of the operation on whether fighter plane pilots would
have obeyed orders to do nothing as American cities were burning. It would
be like asking a firefighter who had trained their entire adult life to
"stand down" when their neighbor's house was burning and the
inhabitants trapped inside (or worse, asking that firefighter to "stand
down" from protecting the next house on the block from catching fire
from the first burning house). In this analogy, the firefighter would
probably ignore orders from his or her boss to stand down, and would seek
to rescue the neighbors without worrying about the consequences until
later. The wargames provide a much better explanation for why there was an apparent
stand down and failure to respond in time.

If a genuine investigation with subpeona power is ever held, the full
details of the 9/11 wargames would need to be declassified and discussed
in public -- who scheduled them, who set up the scenarios, the full communications
records from the participants, the radar tapes (if they still exist) that
were used as part of the simulations, and the identities of those officials
who deployed part of the fighter defense fleet to northern Canada and
Alaska at the very time that warnings were being sounded that a terrorist
attack was imminent.

simulation of a plane crash into the NRO headquarters
(near Dulles Airport, Virginia) - this was not a "terrorism"
exercise but it did result in the evacuation of most NRO employees
just as the "real" 9/11 was taking place, making it more
difficult for the nation's spy satellites to be used to track the
hijacked planes

The publicly available mass media articles about these
exercises state that they were similar enough to the actual events
that top NORAD personnel were confused, not sure if 9/11 was "part
of the drill" or a real world event.

Vigilant Warrior

referenced by Richard Clark, "Against All Enemies" (March
2004)

Northern Vigilance
Toronto Star, December 9, 2001

"Operation Northern Vigilance, planned months
in advance, involves deploying fighter jets to locations in Alaska
and northern Canada." This ensured that there would be fewer
fighter planes available to protect the East Coast on 9/11. Simulated
information was fed into radar screens - is this what confused the
air defenses that morning?

Northern Guardian
Toronto Star, December 9, 2001

only mention was in the early edition of this article,
no details publicly available (probably related to Northern Vigilance)

Tripod II US Department of Justice and City of New York
Rudolph Giuliani's testimony to the 9/11 Commission,
May 2004

biowar exercise in New York City scheduled for September
12, 2001

the one time the "war games" were mentioned during
the official 9/11 Commission hearings
(on the final day of the hearings)

Nicholas Levis posts:

Ha, I finally got into the Official Record

KEAN: Three questions, then I know the general has to leave.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Ask about the war games
that were planned for 9/11.

KEAN: Commissioner Gorelick?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Tell us about the 9/11
war games.

GORELICK: Could you please be quiet? We have only a few minutes with General Myers, and I'd like to ask a
question. General Myers, the -- I'm sorry.

KEAN: I would ask please people in the audience to be quiet if you
want to stay here.

Wimpy of me, but I stayed quiet. The cops that came up to "calm
me down" were a bit too beefy. So I "calmed down." Apparently,
this was also sent out on CNN and audible over TV. The transcript doesn't
include the walk-out by another guy...
They introduced The Emperor's New Timeline, in which all the times are
now consistent and the blame is laid on the FAA. It's completely ridiculous
and we can dismantle it, but I suspect the straightforward way to do is
to concentrate on UA93. The new timeline shifts FAA notification to NORAD
of the UA93 diversion from 9:16 to 10:07 (after the crash), the crash
time from 10:06 (according to the Army's seismic study) to 10:03 and the
Cheney shootdown order for UA 93 from 9:55 (according to Wash. Post) to
somewhere between 10:10 and 10:20. If we can convincingly promote the
evidence we already have of the UA93
shootdown, all this falls completely apart. And it's an emotionally
compelling and easy-to-understand matter.
Best from DC, still,
Nicholas

What was the value-added benefit for the 9/11 hijackers in turning
off their transponder signals?
The planes remained visible to radar; the transponders merely ID'd the
flights. And yet the transponders of all four flights were switched
off. What was gained?
I think the answer is found in the proliferation of wargames on September
11, particularly the exercise called "Vigilant Guardian":
the live-fly simulation of hijackings in the US Northeast staged by
the Joint Chiefs and NORAD the very morning of the attacks. (Health
advisory to coincidentalists: chew carefully before digesting.)At one time on 9/11, as many as 22 aircraft appeared to be hijacked.
Suddenly, the virtue, now verging on necessity, of switching off the
transponders becomes evident. With loss of transponder signals the planes
became bogies, and discriminating real from simulated hijackings became
next to impossible.
This confusion compounded the paralysis already introduced to the system
by drawing most of the Eastern seaboard's combat-ready interceptors
into Northern Canada for the wargame "Northern Vigilence,"
and changing the standing orders for a shootdown in June 2001 by removing
the discretion of field commanders and placing it solely in the hands
of the Secretary of Defense.

The Power Control Group (Richard E Sprague's evocative term from The
Taking of America, 1-2-3) occasionally chooses to tip its hand to
us as a mechanism of control. In nature it would be a threat display,
except the threat implied here is the confirmation that things are really
as bad as we think, and we can't do a damn thing about it. I'm thinking, for instance, of the casual bombshell that dropped a year after 9/11, that on the morning of the attacks the
National Reconnaissance Office was running a simulation of a plane crashing
into a government building. A "bizarre coincidence," it was
called. Though I believe the "simulation" likely a cover story,
it's not exactly a limited hang out, since they hung it out there all
by themselves in an announcement for a Homeland Security conference.
("On the morning of September 11th 2001, [the CIA's John] Fulton
and his team ... were running a pre-planned simulation to explore the
emergency response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike
a building. Little did they know that the scenario would come true in
a dramatic way that day.") Until then, no one was pressing the
9/11 wargames angle. Since, Mike Ruppert and others have discovered
about a half-dozen more, suspiciously and opportunely timed to the attacks. Letting slip the "simulation" story is a bit like Jack the
Ripper writing Scotland Yard and enclosing a portion of his victim's
liver. Catch me if you can! I'm thinking of the FBI promoting agents who deliberately inhibited
pre-911 investigations, and its punishing those who saw it coming and
tried to stop it. What message did this send, and could it be anything
but the one intended? I'm thinking of Michael Chertoff's appointment to Homeland Security,
though he was accused of sabotaging the Department's "Greenquest" investigations into terror financing.
I'm thinking of the appointment of Porter Goss to CIA directorship,
though we know he'd met with 9/11 financier ISI Chief Mahmood Ahmed
the morning of Sept 11, and his congressional seat encompassed the hijackers'
Florida flight schools. No administration has thumbed its nose more often, nor with as much
feeling in our general direction, as this one. Its macabre arrogance
contributes to a legend of invulnerability. That the White House can
not only get away with it, but appear to revel in it, makes them seem
untouchable. And yet, they aren't. And one of the reasons I believe
this is Sibel
Edmonds.

She can hurt them, and they know it. And they don't want you to know
it.

... For six weeks I have been investigating a number of other 9/11
wargames that link directly to the work done by Global Free Press on
Tripod II and other wargames. I am not exaggerating when I say that
we may be close to the Holy Grail of 9/11.
I am certain that it will not be too long before these wargames receive
serious coverage in the mainstream press. If they are reported on while
still linked to the FEMA myth [note: the false claim that FEMA was
in New York the day before to assist with cleaning up after 9/11],
the Bush administration will have a free shot to discredit the Tripod
story (and all of the wargame stories) by disproving the FEMA part to
the press and then asking, "Why should we even respond to the rest?"The wargames will tie Bush and/or
Cheney and Rumsfeld directly into a complete paralysis of fighter response
on 9/11. I have gone directly to many NORAD, DoD,
NRO, and other sources directly and questioned them. I have knocked
on many doors and I have even obtained some documents. I have obtained
an on-the-record statement from someone in NORAD, which confirmed that on the day of 9/11 The Joint Chiefs (Myers)
and NORAD were conducting a joint, live-fly, hijack Field Training Exercise
(FTX) which involved at least one (and almost certainly many more) aircraft
under US control that was posing as a hijacked airliner. That
is just the tip of what I have uncovered.There never was a stand down order issued. That would have been way too incriminating and risky a piece
of incriminating evidence. And it also might have been ignored by eager
fighter pilots who had trained their whole lives to respond to a hostile
aircraft killing Americans. There are several statements that
the "new" NORAD procedures transferring scramble authority
to Rumsfeld on June 1, 2001 were ignored by several NORAD commanders
on 9/11 including General Larry Arnold. That's exactly what I would
have expected. ....

Question 1 - Prior to 9/11, when various military commands were conducting
multiple simultaneous training exercises across various commands and
services, what office or person at the Department of Defense was charged
with coordinating all of them so that they did not overlap or interfere
with each other, or occupy enough military assets at one time to jeopardize
operational readiness?
Question 2 - Since the Tripod II biowarfare exercise was a joint New
York-Department of Justice exercise we now must ask: Prior to 9/11,
under US government Executive Branch procedure, what part of
the government or official was responsible for and had the authority
to coordinate and act as liaison between the military, federal agencies
and state and local agencies and private corporations so that they did
not overlap or interfere with each other, or occupy enough essential
assets at one time to jeopardize operational readiness or impair the
national security of the United States? Was it the White House?
Was it the Office of National Preparedness? Was it the National Security
Advisor? Was it the CIA?
Only official documents and records or on-the-record statements from
qualified experts will suffice.
I ask everyone who reads this - every veteran, every former government
official and all the remaining decent and honest military personnel
and law enforcement officers - to help answer these questions. It is
obvious how important they are.

Pre-Planning For September 11th
Like all of the major wars of the last century, this one too has had
a hidden but very real and undeniable phase of preparation. International
Law Professor Francis A. Boyle, of the University of Illinois wrote
on October 12, "Obviously, the war against Afghanistan
was planned for quite some time. We know for a fact that it had been
war-gamed by the Pentagon going back to 1997. Right around September
11, two US Aircraft carrier task forces conveniently arrived in the
Persian Gulf right at the same time on "rotation." Obviously,
preplanned. Just before September 11, the UK had put together what was
billed as the "largest armada since the Falklands War" and
had it steaming towards Oman, where now 23,000 UK troops are on maneuvers.
This had been planned for at least 3 years. Also, the US "Bright
Star" operation is currently going on in Egypt. 23,000 US troops
plus an additional 17,000 from NATO and its associates. This had been
planned at least two years ago. Finally, NATO just landed 12,000 troops
into Turkey. This had been planned for at least two years. It is obvious
that we are seeing an operational War Plan being executed here that
had been in the works for at least the past four years. September 11
is either a pretext or a trigger or both."
In light of the known available intelligence information that we have
previously presented in these pages, and the hard data on insider trading
that we present in this issue, there can be no doubt that the Bush Administration
awaited the attacks as a pretext for the massive military operations
that we see occurring now. In the words of retired Army Special Forces
Master Sergeant Stan Goff - who taught military science at West Point
- "I can't help but conclude that the actions we are seeing put
into motion now are part of a pre-September 11th agenda. I'm absolutely
sure of that, in fact. The planning alone for operations, of this scale,
that are now taking shape, would take many months. And we are seeing
them take shape in mere weeks."

Mike Ruppert

From the moment the first plane hit the World Trade Center
all suggested confusion caused by a reported drill became a moot and
dead issue. That's why this scenario explaining the hijackers' success
fails the critical test.

In my forthcoming book I have a fully footnoted, six-foot flow chart/timeline
which demonstrates this irrefutably. Decisions were made and multiple
delays and inexplicable actions were taken to delay fighter response
that cannot be explained by the exercise distraction theory. Furthermore,
I have traced all the key decision making to one person: The FAA national
hijack coordinator who has never been identified publicly but was, like
FBI-HQ Supervisory Special Agent Dave Frasca (who suppressed five separate
investigations that could have prevented the attacks), probably promoted
right after 9/11. What is clear from the NORAD/FAA records, as released,
is that this person knew that real hijackings had taken place even before
Flt 11 became the first plane to hit the WTC. There is no justifiable
reason to argue that a drill overrode common sense and duty from that
point on, even though there was almost two hours of inactivity and violation
of SOP which followed.

Webster Tarpley - 9/11 Synthetic Terror:
Made in USA
a book that is a mix of some very good information combined with promotion of the "no plane" hoax and disinformation about ecological limits to endless growth. Tarpley has been a key player in the Lyndon LaRouche political cult, which has long mixed together good analysis and nonsense.

"Staff exercises or command exercises are perfect for a rogue
network which is forced to conduct its operations using the same communications
and computer systems used by other officers who are not necessarily
party to the illegal operation, coup or provocation as it may be. A
putschist officer may be working at a console next to another officer
who is not in on the coup, and who might indeed oppose it if he knew
about it. The putschist’s behavior is suspicious: what the hell
is he doing? The loyal officer looks over and asks the putschist about
it. The putschist cites a staff maneuver for which he is preparing.
The loyal officer concludes that the putschist’s activities are
part of an officially sanctioned drill, and his suspicions are allayed.
The putschist may even explain that participation in the staff exercise
requires a special security clearance which the loyal officer does not
have. The conversation ends, and the putschist can go on with his treasonous
work.""The best working hypothesis is that Amalgam Virgo was the cover
story under which the 9/11 attacks advanced through the bureaucracy.
Preparations for carrying out 9/11 were conducted under the cover of
being preparations for Amalgam Virgo. Most of those who took part in
Amalgam Virgo could hardly have been aware of this duplicity.... Here
was an exercise which included many of the elements which were put into
practice on 9/11. Amalgam Virgo thus provided the witting putschists
with a perfect cover for conducting the actual live fly components
of 9/11 through a largely non-witting military bureaucracy. Under
the cover of this confusion, the most palpably subversive actions
could be made to appear in the harmless and even beneficial guise of
a drill."

"I have an on-the-record statement from someone in NORAD that
on the day of 9/11 The Joint Chiefs of Staff (Richard B. Myers) and
NORAD were conducting a joint, live-fly, hijack Field Training Exercise
(FTX) which involved at least one (and almost certainly many more) aircraft
under US control that was posing as a hijacked airliner."
Mike Ruppert – June 5, 2004, editor of FTW www.fromthewilderness.com

On September 11, 2001, Richard B. Meyers, the acting Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, has thus far claimed he was in a meeting with Senator
Max Cleland, and was “unaware” of the ongoing 9/11 attacks
until after the Pentagon was struck.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld claims that he was in the Pentagon
giving a lecture to members of Congress about the need for America to
“be prepared for the unexpected” pertaining to future terrorist
attacks. As the 9/11 plot unfolded, Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claims he
was effectively out of the loop while inside the Pentagon until it was
struck at 9:38 am. That comes from his testimony to the 9/11 Commission
on March 25, 2004, while under oath.
On September 11, 2001, the Air Force was in its second day of annual wargame
drills, titled VIGILANT GUARDIAN, designed to test national air response
systems, which incidentally involved hijacking scenarios. In addition
the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) which is staffed by military
and CIA personnel, and is in charge of most American spy satellites, was
running a drill for the scenario of an errant aircraft crashing into its
headquarters. NRO headquarters also happens to be located just four miles
from Washington’s Dulles airport - where Flight 77 (the flight
said to have hit the Pentagon) originated. On March 25, when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld testified before
the Commission, not one question was asked with regard to the multiple
wargames confirmed to have been in progress that morning.
Why?
It is possible that Phillip Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11
Commission, has classified certain wargames running on 9/11 so the Commission
can’t address them publicly. The fact that the war games are open
source, having been reported in mainstream publications including the
Associated Press, UPI, and Aviation Weekly Magazine would make such a
classification part & parcel to a cover-up. Hopefully the Commission
will address, in public hearing, the impact these wargames apparently
had on the NORAD response on 9/11.
For example, we know that Lt. Col. Dawne Deskins, regional Mission Crew
Chief for the VIGILANT GUARDIAN exercise, said that everyone at the North
East Air Defense Sector (NEADS), part of NORAD, initially thought the
first call she received about the real 9/11 hijackings was part of the
wargames scenario (Newhouse News, 1/25/02).
This is the question. Did VIGILANT GUARDIAN cause enough confusion to
allow three successful suicide hijackings to occur over an hour and twenty
minute period? The answer would appear to be – no.
NORAD’s recent admission to investigative journalist Mike Ruppert
that they were running a live-fly Field Training Exercise that involved
at least one aircraft under US control posing as a hijacking shows VIGILANT
GUARDIAN is merely the tip of the iceberg. Especially when considering
that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were directly involved with this “drill”..... Moreover, we now must examine the NRO emergency evacuation drill running
that same morning. NRO spokesman Art Haubold told UPI, “It was just
a coincidence. It wasn't an anti-terrorism exercise. It was an emergency
response exercise. It was just a strange coincidence”. The NRO’s
internal war-gaming division planned the drill.
Was the NRO’s war-gaming division working in conjunction with NORAD
and/or the Joint Chiefs of Staff that morning? On page 5 of former White
House counter-terrorism official Richard Clarke’s new book, “Against
All Enemies”, he mentions a war game titled VIGILANT WARRIOR. Is
this yet another wargame running on 9/11? In addition, yet another drill
titled NORTHERN VIGILANCE, was running on 9/11 simulating an air attack
coming from Russia. Just how many war games were running on September
11, 2001?
The NRO is, effectively, the “eyes of the world”. With the
majority of American spy satellites at its fingertips, it can reasonably
be assumed that NRO headquarters was an indispensable resource to NORAD
and the Air Force from 8:28 when Flight 77 made its unplanned 180-degree
turn over Pennsylvania, until 9:38 when it is said to have struck the
Pentagon. The NRO claims as soon as the real world events “began
to unfold” the drill was called off and all but the most essential
personnel were sent home. (UPI, Aug 22, 2002)
Read that last sentence again.Why was the NRO sending home personnel during what was likely
the biggest military crisis on American soil in recent history? Who were
the “most essential” personnel and what did those individuals
do as events unfolded?What role did Secretary Rumsfeld & Richard B. Meyers play in any
of the multiple war game scenarios on the morning of September 11, 2001?
What briefings did they receive about these war games before, during and
after the morning in question?
These are the questions that must be addressed by the 9/11 Commission,
and yet they have not been mentioned even once. Questions, Questions, Questions…
Commissioner Jamie Gorelick did ask Secretary Rumsfeld, while under oath,
a very specific question of exactly when an order was given authorizing
fighter pilots to shoot down aircraft on the morning of 9-11. Rumsfeld
complicated and confused his answer by giving an account of how they had
modified the rules of engagement. General Myers clarified by stating to
the best of his recollection the shoot-down order was communicated directly
to the pilots shortly after the president issued it.
GORELICK: May I ask one more question, Mr. Chairman?
We can't go into the content of the PDDs and the SEIBs here. And I can't
even characterize them in order to ask you the next question that I would
ask. So let me ask you this: Was it your understanding that the NORAD
pilots who were circling over Washington D.C. that morning had indeed
received a shoot-down order?
RUMSFELD: When I arrived in the command centre, one of the first things
I heard, and I was with you, was that the order had been given and that
the pilots -- correction, not the pilots necessarily, but the command
had been given the instructions that their pilots could, in fact, use
their weapons to shoot down a commercial airliners filled with our people
in the event that the aircraft appeared to be behaving in a threatening
way and an unresponsive way.
GORELICK: Now, you make a distinction there between the command and the
pilots. Was it your understanding that the pilots had received that order?
RUMSFELD: I'm trying to get in time because...
MYERS: Well, I think -- my understanding, I've talked to General Eberhart,
commander now of NORAD, and I think he's briefed the staff. And I think
what he told the staff, what he told me, as I recall, was that the pilots
did -- at the appropriate point when the authority to engage civilian
airliners was given, that the pilots knew that fairly quickly. I mean,
it went down through the chain of command.
RUMSFELD: It was on a threat conference call that it was given, and everybody
heard it simultaneously. The question then would be -- the reason I am
hesitant is because we went through two or three iterations of the rules
of engagement. And in the end, we ended up delegating that authority to,
at the lowest level, I believe, to two stars.
MYERS: Right.
RUMSFELD: And the pilot would then describe the situation to that level.
To the extent that level had time, they would come up to General Eberhart.
To the extent Eberhart had time, he would come up to me. And to the extent
I had time, I might talk to the president, which in fact, I did do on
several occasions during the remainder of the day with respect to international
flights heading to this country that were squawking "hijack."GORELICK: I'm just trying to understand whether it is your understanding
that the NORAD pilots themselves, who were circling over Washington, as
you referred to in your statement, whether they knew that they had authority
to shoot down a plane. And if you don't know, it's fine to say that. You
mentioned them in your statement, and I would like to know if you know
the answer.
RUMSFELD: I do not know what they thought. In fact, I haven't talked to
any of the pilots that were up there. I certainly was immediately concerned
that we did know what they thought they could do.
RUMSFELD: And we began the process quite quickly of making changes to
the standing rules of engagement, Dick Myers and I did, and then issuing
that. And we then went back and revisited that question several times
in the remaining week or two while we were still at various stages of
alert. And we have since done that in connection with several other events
such as the Prague summit.
GORELICK: As you know, we were not intending to address the issues of
the day of in this hearing. And it is the subject of a full additional
hearing, and we may be back to you with these questions with a more precise
time line for you to look at.
Thank you very much.
KEAN: Thank you.

At first glance this seems like semantics, but in the context of what
was really happening that morning it may be quite significant. Whether
or not a pilot has a shoot-down order directly communicated to him is
of the highest significance when considering the fact that the pilot may
not know if they are still involved in a war game exercise.
Officials at NORAD have stated when the hijackings first occurred they
initially thought it was part of the Vigilant Guardian drills running
that morning. Despite some confusion, once Flight 11 struck the World
Trade Center at 8:45 am, everyone should have known it was not a test.
However, this is still an assumption because we do not know what the fighter
jocks in the air at the time did and did not know, we do not know the
full extent of the orders they received and it has yet to be explained
why scrambled fighter jets were unable to intercept even one of the 4
hijacked airliners.Scrambling Fighter Jets
Standard operating procedure of both FAA & NORAD dictates that once
an aircraft is off course and/or its transponder is not responding, within
10 minutes Air Force jets are scrambled to re-establish physical contact
with the wayward plane.
Scrambling Air Force interceptors does not mean shooting down any aircraft.
It simply means that an Air Force jet is dispatched to fly next to the
off course aircraft, attempt to communicate with the its pilots, look
inside the cockpit, see who is in control of the plane and report back
to flight control what is actually happening. In the year prior to 9/11
this automatic procedure was triggered a total of 67 times (AP, 8/13/02).
On the morning of 9/11, it was not successfully applied even once in the
well over an hour-long period in which the four separate hijackings occurred. Why?
The most egregious case is that of Flight 77, reported to have struck
the Pentagon. At 8:50 am there was a loss of contact with this plane that
was now well off course and hurtling toward the nation’s capital,
but it was not until 9:24 am that fighter jets were scrambled. That’s
34 minutes after flight control lost contact with the plane and well after
2 hijacked aircraft had already crashed into both World Trade Center towers.
Fighter Planes were dispatched extremely late to the World Trade Center
as well, and only made it there after Flight 175 had crashed into WTC
2, too late to be effective. Those planes were then sent back to base,
instead of being sent in pursuit of an aircraft, which by that time was
widely known to have been well off course. Why?
Did war games conducted by the Air Force, NORAD, NRO and others on 9/11
unintentionally cause this unprecedented ‘confusion’, or does
all of this point to more disturbing conclusions about what happened that
tragic morning?
Hopefully, Commissioner Jamie Gorelick’s statement that Secretary
Rumsfeld may be called back to testify to the Commission regarding the
day of 9/11 itself will happen – and in public.

from AMALGAM VIRGO 01 military exercise, June 1
- 2, 2001 (unclassified report)
note the obvious implication of a potential terrorist attack against the
US Capitol building in the graphic on the right side
(most of the report is about the military response to a cruise missile
launched by terrorists into the US - the picture
of the Capitol building is the only photo of a potential "target"
in the report, although there are graphics simulating
an attack on Gulf of Mexico area target)

Amalgam Virgo is a joint-service, cruise-missile defense exercise
at Tyndall AFB.
Fast, low-flying cruise missiles are hard to detect. To practice their
part in defending the U.S. from these missiles, members of the 513th
Air Control Group deployed to Florida for the "Amalgam Virgo"
cruise missile defense exercise. The multi-service exercise tested the
defense and response capabilities to a cruise missile attack on Tyndall
Air Force Base, Fla., June 1-4, 2001.
Homeland defense is increasingly being discussed as a primary mission
for Guard and Reserve forces. The exercise was coordinated by the Air
National Guard's 1st Air Force and involved active duty, National Guard
and Reserve forces, the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard as players.
Contributing to the air picture was the Navy Aegis cruiser, USS Yorktown,
in the Gulf of Mexico. Equipped with a high-powered radar capable of
tracking more than 100 targets simultaneously, the Yorktown also played
a role in the multi-layered defense used to shoot down a cruise missile
Real-time battle management and the transmission of E-3 aircraft sensor
information is nothing new to the members of the 513th ACG. Data linking
the Airborne Warning and Control System "picture" involves
providing continual updates of the battlefield, thereby providing command
leadership the needed information to instantly respond to changing conditions.
It is crucial that information gathered by the AWACS aircraft be transmitted
to the specified command center for rapid analysis and response.
What was perhaps a bit different about this exercise was that it involved
U.S. homeland defense and practicing to merge a variety of sister services'
capabilities to create a uniform picture and response. There are 75,000
cruise missiles and cruise missile-like aircraft in about 75 countries
around the world. Those facts, coupled with the ease with which a cruise
missile can be acquired make cruise missile defense a priority. Because
of the capability for people with very limited means, in relative terms,
to be able to obtain a cruise missile, NORAD has to be very serious
about that threat. Key to defending against cruise missiles is making
sure all air defenders see the same thing. The goal of this exercise
was to improve the air picture and counter new and emerging threats.
The Coast Guard, Navy and U.S. Southern Command, took the lead in detecting,
identifying and prosecuting the surrogate terrorist vessel that "launched"
the cruise missiles for the exercise. From an air defense point of view,
the exercise was a complete success. Twelve drones were launched, and
twelve were 'destroyed.' The multi-layered defense structure worked
as advertised.
At the heart of the exercise was the Joint-Based Expeditionary Connectivity
Center, or JBECC, which 1st Air Force tested as part of its Area Cruise
Missile Defense demonstration. Ackermann explained that the JBECC is
a highly mobile connectivity shelter, which can be deployed to high-risk
areas to provide early warning of a cruise-missile attack. It does this
by collecting and correlating radar information from the different services
to provide an accurate tracking picture of low-level targets such as
cruise missiles.
During the June 2001 exercise Amalgam Virgo, ANZUS, Inc. demonstrated
the Rosetta LINK-16 / Link-11 gateway functionality. Tracks and data
were forwarded between both links in both directions in real-time. This
demonstration served as the pre-certification contractor test which
was scheduled for October 2001 at JITC. Additionally, ANZUS demonstrated
the JMMTIDS JICO toolset capabilities developed to support the Joint
Interface Control Officer in managing a complex combined interface architecture.

1990 "Internal
Look" exercise simulating Iraq's invasion of
Kuwait -
a war game masking a real event when
Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense

General Norman Schwarzkopf, from an interview in the film Hidden
Wars of Desert Storm, describing the "wargame" that was
underway when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990:

"We went ahead and did an exercise, what's called a command
post exercise, which is what Internal Look was to test our ability to
deal with this particular scenario ... Just so happened we were in the
middle of conducting the Internal Look command post exercise at the
same time the crisis developed in the gulf."

INTERNAL LOOK is a biennial JCS sponsored, CENTCOM coordinated, and
Command Post Exercise (CPX) based on a real-world contingency plan.
Its operational concept is focused on joint battle staff warfighting
at the strategic and operational level. The primary training audience
is CENTCOM's combatant commander and the USCENTCOM headquarters staff.
The secondary training audience is composed of CENTCOM service and functional
component commanders, their staffs and selected allied forces. INTERNAL
LOOK is CENTCOM's major CPX and facilitates training the full battle
staff for CENTCOM and its components. It also allows Third Army to exercise
its deputy joint land forces command responsibilities.
Exercise Internal Look is designed to exercise the command, control
and communications ability of Central Command Headquarters and all of
its different component commands who are spread throughout its AOR (area
of responsibility) in other parts of the world. The exercise tests and
exercises CENTCOM's ability to communicate on the modern battlefield.

On November 23, 1988, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, U.S. Army, became
USCENTCOM'S third commander-in-chief (USCINCCENT). Spurred by the rapid
diminution of Soviet aggressiveness under Mikhail Gorbachev, Gen. Schwarzkopf
worked to supplant USCENTCOM's primary war plan, which involved a war
against the Soviets in Iran, with a more realistic scenario. The strategy
of the original plan called for five and two-thirds divisions to march
from the Arabian Gulf to the Zagros Mountains and prevent the Red Army
from seizing the oil fields of Iran. Instead, Gen. Schwarzkopf
began to plan for what he thought was a far more likely situation: Iraq,
emerging from eight years of war against Iran with the world's fourth-largest
and most battle-hardened army, moving south to capture the rich oil
fields whose output was essential to the industrial world.
Gen. Schwarzkopf first tested this new strategy in INTERNAL LOOK, a
command post exercise held from July 9 through August 4, 1990 at
Fort Bragg and at Hurlburt and Duke Fields in Florida. The events that
led to creation of a new joint air campaign target planning organization
began in July 1990, when General Schwarzkopf conducted the large joint
command post exercise, "Internal Look," at Eglin Air Force
Base, Florida. The exercise tested aspects of the plan for the defense
of the Arabian peninsula. General Schwarzkopf quickly determined that
neither the CENTCOM nor the CENTAF staff was fully capable of planning
large joint air operations for an Iraqi invasion scenario.
US Central Command (CENTCOM) and Third Army prudently anticipated the
Gulf War crisis that occurred in 1990. The initial Third Army plans
drawn up to support Internal Look and operations plan (OPLAN) 1002-90
for CENTCOM recommended a heavy armored force whose closure would be
in question due to sea-lift limitations. However, this force offered
more combat power and an offensive capability that Army planners believed
previous planning forces lacked. This prudent planning by military professionals
was reflected in the Army Desert Shield force deployments and closure
through the end of October 1990. Internal Look showed Saudi Arabia could
be defended against Iraqi invaders, but at great cost.As the exercise unfolded, the real-world movements of Iraq's
air and ground forces eerily paralleled the scripted scenario of the
war game. So closely did actual intelligence reports resemble the fictional
exercise messages, the latter had to be prominently stamped "Exercise
Only." During the last few days of INTERNAL LOOK, Saddam Hussein's
forces invaded and captured Kuwait on 2 August 1990. Suddenly
in possession of Kuwait's oil fields, Iraq was poised to acquire the
even more valuable prize of the Arabian Peninsula. General Schwarzkopf's
immediate requirements were to develop a military strategy and courses
of action to stop the potential Iraqi invasion of Saudi Arabia. [emphases
added]

May 15, 2005--According to National Security Agency insiders, outgoing
NSA Director General Michael Hayden approved special communications
intercepts of phone conversations made by past and present U.S. government
officials. The intercepts are at the height of the current controversy
surrounding the nomination of Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton
as ambassador to the United Nations.
It was revealed by Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) during Bolton's
Senate Foreign Relations Committee nomination hearing that Bolton requested
transcripts of 10 NSA intercepts of conversations between named U.S.
government officials and foreign persons. However, NSA insiders report
that Hayden approved special intercept operations on behalf of Bolton
and had them masked as "training missions" in order to get
around internal NSA regulations that normally prohibit such eavesdropping
on U.S. citizens.
It is noteworthy that in the fictional movie "Enemy of the State,"
it was under the authority of a "training mission" that renegade
NSA officials targeted U.S. civilians for eavesdropping. United States
Signals Intelligence Directive (USSID) 18, the NSA's "Bible"
for the conducting of surveillance against U.S. persons, allows "U.S.
material," i.e., listening to U.S. persons, to be used for training
missions. However, USSID 18 also requires that all intercepts conducted
for such training missions are to be completely destroyed after completion
of the training operation.

.... Back at the White House, the principal cabinet officers had assembled
in the situation room and had been running a crisis management committee
during the afternoon. Haig says he was at first adamant that a conspiracy,
if discovered, should be ruthlessly exposed: "It was essential
that we get the facts and publish them quickly. Rumor must not be allowed
to breed on this tragedy. Remembering the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination,
I said to Woody Goldberg, 'No matter what the truth is about this shooting,
the American people must know it." [fn 11] But the truth has never
been established.
Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger's memoir of that afternoon reminds
us of two highly relevant facts. The first is that a "NORAD [North
American Air Defense Command] exercise with a simulated incoming missle
attack had been planned for the next day." Weinberger agreed with
General David Jones, the chiarman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that
this exercise should be cancelled. [fn 12]
Weinberger also recalls that the group in the Situation Room was informed
by James Baker that "there had been a FEMA [Federal Emergency
Management Administration] exercise scheduled for the next day on presidential
succession, with the general title 'Nine Lives.' By an immediate
consensus, it was agreed that exercise should also be cancelled."
[fn 13]

John Hinckley, who was charged with shooting President Reagan,
was a son of a business partner of then Vice-President George Herbert
Walker Bush.

Mascal is interesting but not evidence for complicity since
it's reasonable to expect a plane crash given the proximity to National
Airport. Anyone who has spent time in the DC area - or flown into National
Airport - understands that the flight path runs very close to the Pentagon
and the office buildings of Rosslyn, Virginia. In fact, it would be irresponsible
NOT to plan for responses to a plane crash. Mascal is probably a distraction
from more solid evidence of complicity.

Contingency planning Pentagon MASCAL exercise simulates
scenarios in preparing for emergencieswww.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/linkscopy/ContPlanP.html archive of article by Military District of Washington on emergency response
planning for a plane hitting the Pentagon

A plane crash is simulated inside the cardboard courtyard
of a surprisingly realistic-looking model Pentagon. This "tabletop"
exercise was designed to help emergency relief personnel better prepare
for disasters when they occur.

Washington area residents have known that a crash into
the Pentagon (or other nearby buildings) was a strong possibility given
the tight aviation corridor used by planes going into National Airport.
It is likely that nearly everyone who has looked at the office buildings
in Rosslyn and Crystal City has wondered about the probabilites of an
off-course jet plowing into one of those buildings (several have beacons
on their roofs to warn pilots). The Pentagon is not very far from the
normal flight path and therefore an exercise of dealing with a crash is
not evidence of preparation for 9/11, although it could be possible that
it was used for that. It is certainly more open to interpretation than the National Reconnaisance Office "plane into building" exercise during 9/11.

Pentagon Simulated a Scenario of an actual Terrorist Attack 10 months
before 9/11
by Michel Chossudovsky
Global Outlook, No 8, Spring 2004
www.globalresearch.ca 20 June 2004
The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO406C.html

In October 2000, a military exercise was conducted which consisted
in establishing the scenario of a simulated passenger plane crashing
into the Pentagon.
The exercise was coordinated by the Defense Protective Services Police
and the Pentagon's Command Emergency Response Team.
According to a detailed report by Dennis Ryan of Fort Myer Military
Community's Pentagram, "the Pentagon Mass Casualty Exercise, as
the crash was called, was just one of several scenarios that emergency
response teams were exposed to on Oct. 24-26": "The fire and smoke from the downed passenger aircraft billows
from the Pentagon courtyard. Defense Protective Services Police seal
the crash sight. Army medics, nurses and doctors scramble to organize
aid… Don Abbott, of Command Emergency Response Training, walks
over to the Pentagon and extinguishes the flames. The Pentagon was a
model and the "plane crash" was a simulated one.
On Oct. 24, there was a mock terrorist incident at the Pentagon Metro
stop and a construction accident to name just some of the scenarios
that were practiced to better prepare local agencies for real incidents.
To conduct the exercise, emergency personnel hold radios that are used
to rush help to the proper places, while toy trucks representing rescue
equipment are pushed around the exercise table.
Cards are then passed out to the various players designating the number
of casualties and where they should be sent in a given scenario.
To conduct the exercise, a medic reports to Army nurse Maj. Lorie Brown
a list of 28 casualties so far. Brown then contacts her superior on
the radio, Col. James Geiling, a doctor in the command room across the
hall.
Geiling approves Brown's request for helicopters to evacuate the wounded.
A policeman in the room recommends not moving bodies and Abbott, playing
the role of referee, nods his head in agreement. …
An Army medic found the practice realistic.
"You get to see the people that we'll be dealing with and to think
about the scenarios and what you would do," Sgt. Kelly Brown said.
"It's a real good scenario and one that could happen easily."
…
Abbott, in his after action critique, reminded the participants that
the actual disaster is only one-fifth of the incident and that the whole
emergency would run for seven to 20 days and might involve as many as
17 agencies.
"The emergency to a certain extent is the easiest part," Abbott
said. He reminded the group of the personal side of a disaster. "Families
wanting to come to the crash site for closure.
"In this particular crash there would have been 341 victims.1 The Bush Administration is lying
This Pentagon exercise simulated a plane crashing into the Pentagon.
The report serves to refute unequivocally claims by the Bush Administration
that they could not have predicted that an airplane could be used in
a terrorist attack.
In the words of Condoleeza Rice at her 16 May 2002 Press Conference:

"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people
would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take
another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to
use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile."

Sec Donald Rumsfeld, whose office is on the third floor of the outer
ring of the Pentagon, stated "I didn't know". "The Pentagon
Mass Casualty Exercise" had been ordered by senior Pentagon officials
and Rumsfeld says he did not know.
Below is an excerpt of his testimony at the 9/11 Commission in March
2004 (in response to Commissioner Ben-Veniste):

BEN-VENISTE: ... So it seems to me when you make the statement,
sir, that we didn't know that planes might be used as weapons in the
summer of 2001, I just have to take issue with that.
RUMSFELD: Well, I didn't say we didn't know. I said I didn't know.
And if I just was handed a civil aviation circular that people did
know. And they sent it out on June 22nd, 2001 (See complete
transcript of testimony at http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/COM403A.html
)

Simulated versus Actual Disaster
The objective of the exercise, in the words of its Pentagon organisers
was

"preparation for any potential disasters… "This
is important so that we're better prepared," Brown said. "This
is to work out the bugs. Hopefully it will never happen, but this
way we're prepared."2

Were they prepared ten months later on September 11, 2001, when the
actual disaster occurred?
What was the purpose of conducting this exercise?

The "Piggy Back" theory
- did the hijackers time their attacks for the wargames
- or did the government piggy back the attack onto the wargames?
Who would be able to delay scrambling of interceptors, especially after
the WTC had been hit?

"Feature: The U.S. Government, Not the Hijackers, 'Chose'
the Date of the 9-11 Attacks"
by Barbara Honegger http://www.911pi.com/honneger.htm [no longer posted
on line]

This is a curious article - it discusses the NRO / CIA "simulation"
of the plane crash into the NRO headquarters and supposes that the "terrorists"
learned of this exercise and then chose to time their attack when the
US air defense system would think that it was merely a simulation, ensuring
the real attack's success.It is just
as likely that the "simulation" exercise was used by elements
in the military / intelligence agencies to distract the air defense apparatus
to ensure that the attack would actually succeed.This alternate interpretation is consistent with the theory that
the Bush-Cheney administration (and the forces they represent) either
saw the attacks coming and chose to let them happen, if not actually planned
them. In other words, the "exercise" could have been
the means to confuse those "not in the know" for a critical
few minutes in order to let the "American Reichstag Fire" happen.
The "piggy back" theory (the hijackers took advantage of the
"exercise") doesn't seem to explain the Air Force's curious
lethargy during the half-hour between the Second Tower being struck and
the Pentagon attack, or why the Pentagon just happened to be hit in the
one place that was almost empty ... Andrews AFB is about ten miles from
the Pentagon ...

The "piggy back" theory is a great "limited
hang out" to discourage officers with inside knowledge from whistleblowing
about the war games, since they could be dissuaded from going public by
the claim that the "terrorists" compromised US military secret
communication systems and that this is the reason why the perpetrators
of 9/11 was successful in their attacks.

In October 2004, Ms. Honegger told a forum in Los Angeles
that "shoe bomber" Richard Reid was really Osama. Subsequently, she authored a paper (widely posted on a variety of conspiracy websites) claiming that the Pentagon was really attacked several minutes before everyone else thought that it was, and this somehow proves the grand conspiracy. The fact that over twenty thousand people were in and around the Pentagon on 9/11 (a normal work day) and did not notice this alleged explosion before the plane hit the Pentagon suggests that this alleged theory can be safely ignored.

Barbara Honegger gained public notoriety in the late
1980s when she quit her post in the Reagan White House and wrote the book
"October Surprise," which discussed the 1980 deal between
George H.W. Bush and the Iranian revolutionary Islamic regime that was
holding US diplomats hostage. Since then, a few other books have been
written that talk about the deal, but few politicians have been willing
to discuss the "original sin" of the Bush administration - the
Reagan/Bush campaign's weapons deal with Ayatollah Khomeini to DELAY the
release of the hostages until after the 1980 election to ensure Carter's
defeat. In most countries, this would be called a coup d'etat.

www.washington-report.org/backissues/0591/9105011.htm1980 October Surprise (Reagan/Bush deal with Iran to delay hostage release
until after the 1980 Reagan-Carter election)
A web search on "Octopus" and "Danny Casolaro" will also add to this."On October 19, 1980, Bush was dealing with Khomeini!"